A Tippie College of Business researcher has received a $230,292 grant from the National Science Foundation to study how the commercialization of academic research is affected by the geographic location of the institution.

Jiajie Xu, assistant professor of finance and principal investigator, said the study findings could better help connect researchers at universities in Iowa to venture capital funding that makes it easier to commercialize their research and help develop the state’s tech economy.

Xu said the vast majority of the country’s venture capital funding sources are in large metro areas, dominated by New York City, Boston, and the San Francisco Bay Area. That makes it difficult for academic researchers in more remote places like Iowa City or Ames. 

“College towns produce a lot of knowledge,” she said. “How do we connect investors to cities in places like Iowa to commercialize more of our ideas?”

Xu said the study will look at the overall commercialization rate of academic research coming from higher educational institutions across the country and break it down by region, asking questions to see what the biggest hurdles are. Is it how far the researchers are from VC clusters? The distance to the nearest U.S. Patent and Trademark or Small Business Administration office? How much is due to the availability of people in the city with appropriate professional backgrounds needed to get a business off the ground, such as accountants or lawyers?

Xu’s grant will be shared with co-investigators at Elsevier, a commercial publisher of academic journals. She expects to have her findings by the end of 2025.

The NSF grant is the sixth received by Tippie researchers in the last three years. 

Media contact: Tom Snee, 319-384-0010 (o); 319-541-8434 (c); tom-snee@uiowa.edu